---
title: He broke the wheel into a thousand pieces, and then fell fainting on… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He broke the wheel into a thousand pieces, and then fell fainting on the ground. Who acts: Burchard. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/93/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Nettle Spinner](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/) / 93

# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 93

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He broke the wheel into a thousand pieces, and then fell fainting on the ground.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Burchard · **What happens:** break, fall, faint · **To what, where:** wheel, thousand pieces, ground

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Burchard), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg540:42:93
# text = He broke the wheel into a thousand pieces, and then fell fainting on the ground.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	broke	break	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	wheel	wheel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	into	into	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	12	advmod	_	_
12	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
13	fainting	faint	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	xcomp	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **break** | past | Burchard | the wheel |  |  |  | into thousand pieces *result* | vn break-45.1 «NP V NP PP.result»: agent=Agent wheel=Patient into piece=Result |
| 2 | **fall** | past | Burchard *not said here* |  |  |  | then |  | vn long-32.2 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **faint** | gerund | Burchard *not said here* |  |  | the ground |  |  | vn change\_bodily\_state-40.8.4 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 92](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/92/)
- next →: [sentence 94](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/94/)
- ↑ back to [The Nettle Spinner](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/)